Take off the skin you know
by Drakulina
Summary: The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Sansa remembers this, Sansa remembers a lot of things that Alayne didn't. Jaime/Sansa. Oneshot.


_**Take off the skin you know**_

_The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives._ Sansa remembers this, Sansa remembers a lot of things that Alayne didn't.

* * *

She's alone, her family is gone and yet she is still here. Petyr made sure of it. He taught her and used her and now he's gone as well. She made sure of that.

_Cat_ he used to whisper into her ear as he stroked her hair. _Cat, my love_, but she was Alayne, maybe she was Sansa, but she wasn't Cat. Or perhaps she was, Sansa thinks, remembering her lady mother and her steely strength as well as her loving eyes. _Mother_.

She also remembers Petyr's expression as she pushed him out the moon door and he should have seen it coming if he really was as good a player as he claimed. Alayne beat him at his own game by taking Sansa back.

* * *

When Jaime Lannister comes for her he is clearly surprised to have actually found her two years after her miraculous escape from King's Landing, hair still dyed a muddy brown with only a strip of bright red at the crown. He seems even more surprised to see her in command of the Eyrie, eyes never leaving her when she asks him why she shouldn't just throw him into the Sky Cells or right out the Moon Door.

"You could, my lady." He narrows his eyes ever so slightly for only the tiniest moment, but it doesn't escape her notice. "Perhaps you have every right."

She just raises her eyebrow and tilts her head, waiting for him to continue, trying her hardest not to let the anger, pain and fear at the subtle reminder of his families crimes against her and hers cloud her mind. Both Alayne and Sansa have been trained better than that.

Her hands are clasped together firmly, turning white, but she still doesn't miss how his jaw clenches.

"I made a vow to your mother, to bring you back to Winterfell."

"If I recall correctly, you also made a vow to King Aerys and you did not keep that one either, Kingslayer." There's something in his face, a ghost of an emotion she can't quite place when she calls him Kingslayer. "Words are wind, I have been told since you last saw me. I was only a little fool then." Cersei's face swims before her eyes, which still resembles his too much, even with the beard.

"You are my last chance for honor." He looks defiant and tired at the same time.

"And what do you know of honor?" Her father had been honorable and this man hasn't got the right to speak of it at all.

She has him thrown into the cells before he can utter another word.

* * *

_Winterfell_.

She had almost given up hope of ever seeing it again, her mind dictating that she stay in the Vale for now, far up in the Eyrie where it is safe until the right moment comes; if it ever comes.

She's lying in her bed; the candles have been blown out long ago, so she simply stares into deep blackness; yet all she can see is her home, the stone walls with vines creeping on their surfaces, Bran climbing and laughing, mother reprimanding him. There is the godswood, deep red leafs glowing in the setting sun, her father silently praying beneath the tree. All this is Sansa's home, parts of which she will never get back and yet these thoughts won't let her rest.

* * *

She goes to see him, alone with just a torch to guide her way. She sits outside his cell and looks at him as good as she can in the dim light. He looks tired even in his sleep, lines marring his face and she wonders what had happened to the golden knight she had seen arrive in Winterfell in such a short amount of time. Perhaps he wasn't so golden even then; perhaps it was just one of her silly dreams of pretty knights and princes. Sansa thinks back, but can barely remember that day that seemed decades away now.

"Are you going to watch me all night?"

Her torch almost drops to the ground out of surprise. Almost. She doesn't answer, won't indulge him or let him taunt her. She didn't come to play games with him; not the ones he wanted to play anyways. Hers is far more serious.

She interrogates him, makes him tell her everything, about his captivity, about his escape, about his time in King's Landing afterwards. She questions his relationship to his sister just to test him and she's not surprised when he tells her the truth.

She knows it as the truth as she watches his face for the entire time for the tiniest sign of deception, the twitch of a muscle, flickering eyes. She notices that he does the same, intently watches her reactions every time he mentions her mother or Robb, lives that have gone by in her absence.

Some part of her hates him for having been there when she wasn't. It wants to tell him of all he missed, of Cersei, her cruel jabs, the little wisdoms she used to bestow on Sansa, but Alayne knows better than to volunteer any information no matter how insignificant it seemed.

"I'll bring you back. Back to that icy wasteland you call a home." It should make her angry how easily he insults the North, but in that moment she actually believes him and it doesn't matter.

* * *

She makes plans, bides her time and gathers men, but these things take time and in that time she learns many things about Jaime Lannister.

He almost flinches when she mentions his twin.

He stiffens when she looks at his missing hand for too long.

He's lost more than his hand. He is lost as a whole, perhaps more than she is caught between Sansa and Alayne.

Lannister, Kingslayer, Oathbreaker he has more than one name too, but doesn't want any of them, none but Jaime, she learns patiently. Jaime, who claims to be hers, like a gift from her mother from beyond the grave.

_You are my last chance for honour._

And Jaime could be anybody, she thinks, ready to be shaped into whoever she needs and wants. She can see it from the way he looks at her, like she is his answer, his salvation, the lady out of songs to whom he can dedicate himself wholly and purely.

She's Sansa, she reminds herself again, not Alayne, not some faceless lady either. She is the last of the Starks, a wolf with no pack, so she makes one for herself. He makes not so bad a wolf once she shows him how.

* * *

When they leave the Vale behind them snow is falling on their heads. They can barely see and she notices the men shiver while she sits straight in her saddle and breaths in deeply, letting the cold and the clean smell of ice infiltrate her lungs.

Winter is coming and it's the north calling out to her to come home. Sansa Stark has every intention of answering.


End file.
